Iraq, Syria Leaders Strike Deal For Three Crossborder Pipelines

Iraq and Syria have reached an initial agreement to build three major pipelines across their borders to carry Iraqi crude oil and gas to Syria’s port of Banias on the Mediterranean Sea.

Plans call for one crude pipeline to have a capacity of 1.5 MMbpd while the second will have a capacity of 1.25 MMbpd. Details on the capacity for the gas pipeline have not been reported.

Iraqi oil ministry officials said a tender for the project will be issued in the coming months. The move comes while Iraq, holder of the world’s third-largest oil reserves, is seeking to more than quadruple its current production of 2.4 MMbpd.

The planned Iraq-Syrian pipelines aren’t the first of their kind. An existing pipeline from Kirkuk to Banias had transported around 250,000 bpd before the eight-year Iraq-Iran war that ended in 1988. However, the pipeline has not been in operation since the U.S.-led war in 2003 when it was heavily bombed.